Administration of bioactive agents in conjunction with medical procedures is common practice in the surgical arts. Bioactive agents have been applied during procedures as solutions sprayed onto tissue or as coatings on medical devices.
Use of bioactive agents during surgical procedures allows for local application of medicaments. This may enable the use of bioactive agents that may not be absorbed when administered orally or parenterally. Hemostatic agents may be used to reduce bleeding in situ, analgesics may be applied to the injured tissue, antibiotics may be used to prevent infection at the site of incision, and anti-adhesion agents may prevent scar tissue formation around an implant.
Processes used to attach bioactive agents to a medical device, such as surface modification by methods such as plasma treatment, silane coupling treatment and acid sensitization, cell immobilization, plasma grafting, and the like are often complicated and costly. Often bioactive agents may be applied as a coating to specific medical devices. Therefore, other devices at the tissue site may not benefit from local delivery of a bioactive agent from the coated medical device.